Melissa Pouliot, described by one of her children as a book writing machine, likes to think of herself as a word artist.
Her local newspaper published her first story Santa’s Elf when she was eight years old. Her early childhood stories about princesses, fairies and goblins, inspired by authors such as Enid Blyton and May Gibbs, evolved to teenage soap operas influenced by Sweet Valley High and the crime mysteries of Trixie Beldon.
While studying a Commerce university degree, she wrote her first unpublished piece for friends and family based on when she worked as a governess in outback Queensland. After an epiphany on a train to Sydney, she changed her university studies from numbers to words and enrolled in a Journalism degree. She returned to the harsh outback Queensland heat for her first newspaper job before moving south to the flat, arid landscape of Western Victoria to work in the busy newsroom of a tri-weekly paper.
